Poisoned
by aikakone
Summary: Nymphadora Tonks is poisoned with a metamorphmagus freezing potion, and Alastor Moody has to administer the antidote before she becomes permanently petrified and dies.


**A/N:** Thanks to minttown1, who beta read this story.  


~*~

Alastor Moody hated the house that was the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix. He wasn't really fond of any place, even his own home where that Crouch had duped him. As it was the headquarters for the organization, there were usually people in and out at various times of the day. At this particular time, though, he was completely alone in the house. Thankfully, that horrid house elf had been gone long ago.

He was still working on removing the portrait of Mrs. Black. He hated that, too, but not nearly as much as Remus Lupin did, though Remus was better at disguising it. He hadn't seen silencing charms for portraits, but he'd find one if he had to work to the end of his life to make one himself. That, or he'd try to make an even more powerful charm to get the portrait unstuck from the wall.

As if on cue, he was disturbed by the loud crashing in the hallway. It would be that damned clumsy Tonks back from her mission, and her perpetual acts of clumsiness awoke the hideous portrait once again.

"TONKS!" he yelled over the equally loud rantings of Mrs. Black. "You are a shame to the profession. I don't know how anyone could think you would be good at covert operations, you clumsy harpy."

He knew his words were harsh, but he never had a kind way with the young Auror. Their standard communication was done with rudeness and verbal jabs. He would never, ever, under any circumstances, admit to anyone else that she was a valuable member of the Order. He wasn't going to play sweet to her now, even if they were alone in the house.

He found Tonks sprawled on the floor rapidly changing faces and breathing heavily. Her eyes in whatever form they took sought his. "Help me!" she pleaded.

"Do get up! I have no time for your shenanigans," he barked at her.

She continued to change faces, and touched herself in disbelief. "I can't stop! I can't control this!" 

Tonks wailed again at the pain of this morphing, which had never before hurt her. "Alastor! Help me. Please!" she begged again.

"What happened to you?" he asked in his no-nonsense manner.

She sat up and held him tightly by the hand. "I had gone to Malfoy Manor to spy on them. They were having a grand party with several of the Dark Lord's minions. While I was gathering information, someone slipped a potion in my drink. I didn't know it was there until it was too late. I started changing in front of everyone, and I barely made it out alive."

"Have you never listened to anything I've told you! You can't trust anyone. Don't even trust me," he said, looking at her with ferocity.

"That's a horrible life, Alastor. We have to trust _someone_," she pouted as tears misted her eyes. She quickly batted the tears away. "I was foolish. I let my guard down."

"You blew your cover, and now we don't even know what's wrong with you," he sighed at her in frustration. "Can you walk at least?"

"Yes, I think I can," she said unsteadily.

Tonks stood up and leaned heavily on Moody as they went up to her room hobbling along on something akin to two and a half legs. Near the top of the stair she stumbled and fell, so he had to take hold of her and carry her the rest of the way. As she was still changing, it made it difficult for him to hold on to her, but eventually they reached her room.

Tonks went to her bed while Moody went to the Floo to call Severus Snape.

~*~

"Severus!" the old Auror yelled out. "Severus Snape! If you're there, I want to talk to you now!"

The younger man came into view and was clearly not amused. "Is there something you want, Moody?"

"I need your professional help immediately. Tonks has been poisoned while on a reconnaissance  
mission at a Death Eater party, and I have no idea what type of poison they've used on her," he explained quickly and clearly.

"You should know what to do, Moody," Snape chastised.

"Yes, I _should_, but Potions is your area of expertise, is it not?" Moody countered with high venom.

"It is. I will be right there," Snape replied starkly.

Alastor went back to Nymphadora Tonks, who was on the bed clutching her chest as if she were in the pain of a heart attack. "Severus Snape is on his way," he informed her.

"Thank you," he said, almost too softly for him to hear.

He nodded back to her, preferring to say nothing.

~*~

With his usual efficiency Severus Snape came to the Order Headquarters moments later with his travel case full of necessary potions ingredients. Moody met him at the door and ushered him up to the room were Tonks lay in spasms on the bed.

Methodically he checked her over from the smell of her breath to the hue on her tongue. He checked her other vital signs and took a clipping from her hair. He dropped that into a vial, and grunted in acknowledgement as it gave the reaction he expected.

"It's a poison created specifically for metamorphmagi, and to a lesser extent animagi. She's going through the first stages now--the uncontrollable shape shifting. The next stage will be the body freezing into one form and the victim barely able to move. The last and final stage, if left without the antidote, will be that she freezes in that form forever," Snape instructed with clarity.

"Do you know how to make the antidote?" Moody asked for Tonks.

"Yes, and no. While I know how to make it in theory, I have never done it in practice. I must go back to Hogwarts where I have more supplies." Snape rose to leave.

Looking at the couple, Snape answered the unasked question. "In the meantime, all you can do is comfort her to the best of your ability." Snape's mouth smirked at the irony of Moody comforting anyone. "I will work as fast as I can, because if she is not given the first of the antidote before entering the second stage of the poison, all may be lost."

He swished his black cape as he walked away. At the doorway, he looked over his shoulder and spoke again. "If she does enter the second stage before my return, keep her moving. Even if she doesn't want to move, she must."

Snape's cape billowed behind him as he left the room.

~*~

Tonks was face-down on her bed, fighting the queasiness in her stomach. She heard Alastor's uneven steps as he hobbled around her room. Finally, he stopped near her.

"Do you want a glass of water?" he asked in a somewhat helpful manner.

"From you? No. I can't trust anyone. Not even you," she ground out with bitter sarcasm. 

Instead of taking aid from him, she rose and stumbled to the water pitcher she kept in her room, a Muggle relic that had been in the Tonks family for generations. She managed to take a small sip of the water, but her hands were shaking so badly she dropped the glass and pitcher.

"That was my great-grandmother's!" she said while staring at the broken pieces around her feet.

"Come back to the bed, child," he chided her as he helped steer her away from the debris. He'd use the Reparo charm later.

He watched her as she lay and patted her on the back. He noticed that her changes were starting to come slower. So did she, but neither said anything. Tonks was on the threshold of stage two effects of the poison.

"You need to move," Moody said lowly, reminding her of Snape's words.

"I know," she said at the same time as Snape burst through the door to her room.

"I have it!" the Hogwarts Potions Master said in triumph.

"Give it here," Alastor ordered as both men heard Tonks give a sigh of relief.

Severus cautioned him. "Not so fast. The directions are very specific, and shall we say, personal. There will be two parts to administering this if she is to recover. Tonks needs to take five drops of this orally every half hour." Snape held up a blue vial with the first part of the remedy. 

"This other is the second part," he continued to explain, showing a jar with pasty-looking cream inside it. "This is a skin ointment, and she must be massaged completely from head to toe every hour. You must use everything in the jar before you stop."

"When will we know if the potion has worked?" Alastor asked again.

"If you act quickly, you will know by morning. Tonks will regain her normal morphing ability. If you do not do this correctly, she may not die today, but she _will_ die. Her body will petrify so that she will become only a consciousness inside a frozen shell. She may understand us, but communication will cease to exist. Eventually from despair, so will her life." 

"Thank you for making the potion, Severus," Tonks called out softly from the bed. Her brow was covered with sweat and she could barely focus on the man who had brought her antidote.

"I am needed back at Hogwarts, and you are plenty capable to do this part of the task," Snape said in departure. Before he left the room, he shot one last acid remark over his shoulder to Moody. "Try not to enjoy rubbing her too much, old man."

~*~

Damn Snape! And damn Tonks for getting herself poisoned! Had she learned nothing? Alastor evaluated his charge and informed her that she had to remove her clothing. "Don't be embarrassed," he added gruffly. "I've seen plenty of naked women before."

"I'm sure you have," she said using dry humor as a defense mechanism.

He began his ministrations on her with five drops of the blue liquid as Severus had instructed. Then he took the pot of salve in his hands and opened it while Tonks slowly removed her clothing. Alert to the change in her movements, Alastor asked her, "Why are you moving so slowly?"

"I think I'm freezing," she said flatly.

He hobbled to her and with little care for tenderness and helped her out of the rest of her garments. It wasn't the time for romantic flair, and it certainly wasn't the type of relationship they had. He must remember first that she was a young Auror without substantial experience who had gotten herself in trouble.

"Heads or tails?" he asked while portioning the healing ointment on his fingers.

"What?" Tonks asked weakly.

"Do you want me to start with your head or your feet?"

"Head. I have ticklish feet," she said while taking some salve herself. "I can do my feet while you do that. It will help me keep moving."

It was an agreeable work solution. Moody rubbed the salve all over her hair, scalp and back while Tonks applied it to her chest, legs and feet. She had to lie down on her stomach so he could finish the backs of her buttocks and legs.

Attempting humor, she said, "I haven't blown off my buttocks with my wand."

"No, but you may have done worse to yourself," he said in reproach without a hint of reciprocal humor.

She finished applying salve to the front places she couldn't reach the first time and then waited with a blank stare the few minutes until the half hour was complete. Then five more drops of the blue liquid were taken.

As the cycles were repeated, Tonks drifted further and further away so that she could barely help Moody administer the remedy. She felt the stiffness enclose her like a horrible fog that captured her and wouldn't let her find her way free.

"You have to keep moving!" she heard his voice say through the fog. She understood, but could not make her limbs respond to the commands she was giving them.

In time his hands took over completely for hers that could not move. She could feel him pushing her and prodding her all over her body, even in the most intimate places only a lover would touch. This man, he was not her lover, and had never before touched her so personally. While there had been some registering that he was skilled with his old gnarled hands, eventually she lost the feeling of the sensation as her skin began to petrify as Severus had predicted.

Feeling almost gone and emotionally adrift, Tonks tried to speak to him. It hurt to speak, but she knew she must try.

He heard her muffled voice and begged her repeat, "What is it, Dora, lass? Speak up!"

"I was never you," she said with pitiful slowness. "I've been many people, but I've never been you. Not even when I would make those silly noses for Ginny and Hermione. I was never you," she repeated woefully.

"That's not so important right now," Moody told her.

"It is. If I never get a chance to say anything to you again, please know that."

She sounded resigned that the remedy that Snape had prepared would not work. Moody knew her fear to be in control when she sniffed, "I'm going to die."

"Yes, you will die as all people ultimately die," he said truthfully, "but not today. Not if I have anything to say about it."

He continued to rub her flesh all over in a deep and thorough fashion. He'd almost lost count of how many times he had touched her completely from head to toe. An idle thought ran through his head that one of the young bucks in the Order would have loved to be touching her like this but under wholly different circumstances. Not one of those boys would have been able to help her now, he thought angrily.

The time passed until he came to the last dosage of the vial potion and the healing salve. She had shown no signs of recovery at all, and her eyes stared dully ahead. The young metamorphmagus appeared to be completely locked into her petrification.

"I tried to save you, Dora, lass," Alastor said to her in a soft, almost caressing voice.

Inwardly he cursed all the Dark Magic in the world with words that should not be repeated in front of a lady, even a petrified one who could not correct him. He chose to surrender to sleep on the hope that they were not too late and Snape's potion would have the promised effects when the morning came.

~*~

Moody had nightmares as he slept, which in itself was not unusual for him. In his nightmares this time he was the frozen Tonks who could not break free, who died slowly to the world.

When morning came and sunlight shone through the windows, he did not feel the warmth on his face. He had been far too exhausted to respond to such simple stimuli. Alastor Moody continued to sleep.

Beside him, in dim consciousness, Nymphadora Tonks registered the presence of sunlight in her eyes that had been frozen as they were wide open. As anyone would do naturally, she blinked.

With cautious excitement after she realized she had moved, Tonks tested whether or not Severus Snape's antidote had worked. Choosing to move only her eyes, she blinked several times and moved her eyes from left to right. The movements were slow but became faster with every attempt.

Continuing to test herself slowly, Tonks lay still but wiggled her fingers and toes. Normal human movement seemed to be in order. She then tried to do one of the simpler morphic changes; Tonks made her hair grow. Again it was successful.

In a brash move, she tried the first strange face that came to mind. She quickly morphed to appear as Severus Snape, complete with his hooked nose. The effort was successful, fast and pain-free. Changing back to something more feminine, she sighed with relief knowing she was healed.

Her healing would not have happened without Moody who slept beside her. Throwing caution to the wind for what he may do, Tonks reached to touch his face and wake him gently. He awoke with a start, but did not draw his wand on her as she would have expected.

"I am better now," she said simply, showing him several different faces before settling on one in particular.

"I like this face," he said looking up at the one face in her many disguises that so few had seen. It was the true face of Nymphadora Tonks.

"I like _this_ face," she repeated back to him, looking at him with an unreadable expression. 

Tonks then slid off the bed and reached for her robes to cover her naked self. She put them on methodically, without rush due to shyness or embarrassment. 

When she was done, she looked over her shoulder at Alastor Moody who was waiting on her bed and said, "Come. Breakfast."

Moody got up and followed her out of the room without a single word.


End file.
